Report #6 - The Final Push

We are energized and exhausted at the same time. The early vote totals are really encouraging. Saturday morning MoveOn PAC organized a Leave No Voter Behind rally headlined by Arianna Huffington. Lisa Loeb opened with a couple of songs. She was followed by Kathy Najimy and then Arianna. By my count, 300 volunteers were gathered to begin the final canvassing push in Clark County to get Kerry supporters to the polls. Many more would arrive as the day progressed. Interestingly, many, many more volunteers are from California than from Nevada, most have driven from the L.A. area just that day. Late arrivers will head directly to the MoveOn PAC headquarters at 1700 East Desert Inn Road to get checked in, trained and assigned.

At the end of the rally, the MoveOn PAC staff took over. First they divided the new volunteers into 5 or 6 groups and assigned them to Precint leaders. Then they handed out materials and helped the precinct leaders do an initial training. Our group included our friend from Paris, Texas who had already canvassed, an L.A. writer who had canvassed on Friday and three new canvassers - all teachers - from LA. These memebers of my team would all be gone by Sunday afternoon and I would be assigned and train a new team on Monday.

My precint had been covered really well during the week so I turned my team's attention to helping precint 7071 - just a few blocks away from 7084 but quite a different demographic. This precint was peppered with apartments and with fourplexes. The voters skewed much younger. This precint had not been canvassed as much and consequently few names had been eliminated from the original walk lists.

The drill is the same. Working from walking lists printed just that morning, you knock on doors of targeted households. The objective is to identify Kerry voters, determine if they have voted early and get a commitment as to when they will be voting on Tuesday. You quit when it gets too dark. On Saturday night many residents in this area were headed out for the evening.